


False Comfort

by esteoflorien



Series: Follower Fic Fest: February 2015 (Angst) [2]
Category: Battlestar Galactica, Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-26
Updated: 2015-02-26
Packaged: 2018-03-15 09:57:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3442919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esteoflorien/pseuds/esteoflorien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He knows she has to believe in New Caprica. There is no other way. She knows as well as he does that there is no future for them among the stars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	False Comfort

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PerilouslyClose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PerilouslyClose/gifts).



> For my lovely Bex, who asked for New Caprica angst.

It's too good to be true, Bill thinks, looking at it all, at Baltar's shining new tent city on a mediocre hill. He can't say that to Laura, of course; she's a believer in humanity, if not in Gaius Baltar, and so she has to believe in New Caprica. There is no other way. She knows as well as he does that there is no future for them among the stars.

Bill has no interest in entertaining fantasies. He knows that he will not see the curve of Laura's cheek soften with the passing years; he will not see the lines deepen around her eyes, and her lips thin. Instead, he will watch as she wastes away in her prime until she is bowed by sickness, not age. It is an eventuality that seems terribly far away tonight.

It's difficult not to wonder what Laura would otherwise have looked like. _What a funny phrase_ , he thinks, but it's clumsy because there's no other way to put it. How can one be nostalgic for something that will not happen? Still, feeling her shift beside him, settling herself closer in her sleep, he gives himself leave to imagine. She could have her cabin; he would build it for her. It would be small; neither of them has any desire for luxury. Perhaps large kitchen that opened out into the living area, one large room, where he could sit by the fireside and listen to her bustle about. He's no engineer, but he might be able to rig up some kind of running water, at least to the kitchen. There would be a bedroom in the back. They would work the land together in the spring and summer, harvest in the autumn, plan for the next in the winter, and so settle in to a new rhythm of the year.

It's a beautiful fantasy, but fantasy nonetheless. Nothing good comes of haphazard dreams lacking a foothold in reality. He recognizes it for what it is: false comfort in the form of a pleasurable, wistful diversion.

Yet the alternate course, slipping into the gentle anesthetic of forgetting, would be too easy. Too easy, he concedes, and far too tempting. He knows what comes of deliberately ignoring reality, however harsh. He knows what happens when one stays on the ship instead of returning home, that there are tiny moments missed that build to an irreparable chasm. No amount of professional respect is worth the vastness between him and Lee, and the very last thing he wants is to put that between him and Laura, too.

So he will take his shore leave when he is able, return to this tent and then, later, if they are so fortunate, perhaps a cabin, and Laura will wait for him, and he will not waste time thinking on how it will be when she is no longer there. Tonight, Laura has fallen asleep on his shoulder, in the dirt, outside of a tent on a tiny, defenseless planet, and Bill can't imagine wanting to be anywhere else.


End file.
